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Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet is back in the Beltway news, mucking up his party’s chances of retaking the Senate in 2016. But he’s not alone.

Democratic Political soothsayer Larry Sabato says their leader in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada, is also in trouble. Nice company you’re keeping, Bennet.

Sabato writes in Politico that the best hope for Bennet — there is “no one that immediately suggests the incumbent is doomed.”

“Doomed” is a strong word, perhaps it’s more accurate to describe Bennet’s candidacy as vulnerable, ill-fated, destined to collapse on top if itself. And of course he’s not “immediately” doomed, the election isn’t even until next year.

In a recently compiled list by the Washington Post of the top 10 most competitive races in the country, here’s where Bennet falls:

5. Colorado (Democratic-controlled). What we know: Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D) is vulnerable in this swing state. What we don’t: what the Republican field might look like. The current thinking is that either Rep. Mike Coffman or his wife, newly elected state Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, runs — and whichever one does make a go of it is the favorite to be the nominee.

With just over a million bucks in the bank, Bennet also made The Hill’s list of fundraising losers last month.

Actually, it looks a lot like Bennet’s reelection is doomed. No wonder he has Hillary Clinton on his speed-dial for the vice presidency.

The nation hasn’t even settled on a Republican or Democratic candidate for 2016, and already Gardner is being lauded as a candidate in 2020.

The American Spectator predicts that if Hillary Clinton wins the 2016 campaign, Gardner is one of two dynamic senators poised to challenge her reelection bid.

Recalling the “often-ugly” politics employed by Democrats against Gardner, the Spectator noted that “none of it worked.”

As a two-term House member Gardner, 40, deflected the charges with poise, and scored a surprisingly large 7-point victory over the incumbent.

The win was just under three points, but the Spectator’s enthusiasm is appreciated.

And just the fact that Gardner was the Republican nominee at all reflects his political acumen. Tapped by House Republican leaders as a rising star, Gardner was initially reluctant to risk his seat for a Senate race in a state that had, until 2014, been trending Democratic.

And he’s a serious policy guy, too. Gardner “has become one of the House’s most active players on energy issues,” writes the 2014 Almanac of American Politics.

This must really be nauseating for U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, watching the D.C. media predict his demise, while promoting Gardner’s rise.

In other news that the world is about to end, the U.S. House cast a UNANIMOUS vote last night to strip bonuses away from VA officials, especially those caught up in recent scandals involving the care of their charges.

Insult was literally added to injury last year when top officials in charge of the broken system at 38 hospitals were awarded nearly $400,000 in bonuses.

For a Congress that can’t even agree on whether it’s day or night, this vote sends a pretty strong bat signal to the VA to get its act together.

However, it’s unclear whether the VA would use its new authority even if it became law. In January, Miller’s committee held a hearing in which two senior VA officials said the VA had no opinion on whether corrupt or negligent officials should be able to keep their ill-gotten bonuses.

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) was shocked at the VA’s lack of any position on the bill. “I think it’s just extraordinary, and what it says to me, and what it says to the veterans of this country, is nothing’s really changed,” he said.

There are only so many passes a cabinet secretary will get from Congress before politicians start pounding their fists on desks and demand that a presidential appointee resign.

Yet the strikes against VA Secretary Robert McDonald just keep coming. Congress gave McDonald a pass for his unprofessional behavior against Coffman in committee and they looked the other way when McDonald told a whooper of a lie about how many officials have been fired because of the scandals. Congress also forgave McDonald for “misstating” his military service.

Even if the Senate passes the House bill, it’s unlikely President Obama would sign it into law. Still, it will be interesting to see how Congress reacts when McDonald continues to ignore their wishes to withdraw bonuses and fire VA officials for the harm done to our nation’s veterans.

Another day, and another glaring example of the Democrats’ cognitive dissonance under the Gold Dome. The party that claimed it wanted to focus on middle class pocketbooks as the 2015 session kicked off (that would be the Democrats) just killed a bill that would have saved the middle class money. The State Senate bill would have reduced the expensive renewable energy standards – now 30% by 2020 – jammed through by a hyper-partisan legislature in 2013. The House killed it on near-party-line vote.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised – the Dems actually wanted more. According the to Colorado Democratic Party 2014 Platform, the Democrats actually want a staggering 50% of the Colorado’s energy to come from renewable sources by 2020. That’s almost double the percent that left many Coloradans agape in 2013. This realization comes on the heels of news that electric prices are the highest they have ever been. This hits the middle class where it hurts – their wallets.

Democrats really do love to legislate every single aspect of our lives ad nauseam. Their latest attempt can be seen in House Bill 15-1221, which would require employers to offer additional leave to parents in order to attend their children’s academic activities.

House Democrats

We didn’t even know this was a problem in need of fixing… and as it turns out, it isn’t! According to testimony on the proposed legislation, over 90 percent of employers already offer some kind of flex leave that parents can use to attend children’s academic activities, and there is no data to support that employees don’t already have the ability to leave work to support their kids.

Democrats are really hoping they can turn this into a divisive issue, but getting the working woman or man riled up about a right they already have is going to be an uphill battle. Especially since there is a good pro-business argument to be made against the legislation, as Compass Colorado’s Kelly Maher, opined:

“We need to ask ourselves if we really need to legislate every aspect of the employer/employee relationship. Does more regulation imposed on businesses get the desired outcome, or will it just create more red tape and make the employer/employee relationship more adversarial?”

Bottom line: the Dems can go ahead and charge this hill if they want, but they shouldn’t hold out hope it’s going to get them anywhere.

When U.S. 36 opened as a toll road between Boulder and Denver in 1951, there were two lanes in each direction, and one interchange between the two cities. The state agreed to remove the tolls from the road once it was completed, which happened in 1968.

Fast forward a few decades, and it looks like the state is ready to put new, very expensive tolls back on U.S. 36. Under a Democrat-crafted 2009 law, designed to circumvent TABOR, the conditions were set for public-private partnerships to take over maintenance and tolling on some of Colorado’s most heavily-used thoroughfares.

This law, Funding Advancement for Surface Transportation and Economic Recovery Act, also known as FASTER, paved the way for a consortium of construction companies backed by Goldman Sachs called Plenary Roads Denver to toll express lanes on U.S. 36 all the way to Boulder.

These lanes differ from traditional HOV lanes in that a driver will need at least three people in the car to qualify as an HOV, and avoid the toll. Many people are familiar with HOV lanes that just need two people per car. Additionally, these express lanes will be extremely expensive, with one way trips from Broomfiled to Denver costing as much as $7.75 if you have a special transponder in your car, and $13.83 for that same one way trip if you do not have the transponder.

With a transponder, that’s a $15.50 per day commute, or over $300 per month to commute during the week. If you don’t have the transponder, it’s $553. It would seem Democrats are trying to disincentivize the middle class from driving to work even though Colorado is not New York City and driving is really about the only rational commute method.

Let’s face it, taking a bus every day simply does not work for an overwhelming majority of Coloradans. If you have to leave the office during the day to meet clients, pick up supplies, attend meetings, or perform countless other tasks that are not confined within your employer’s four walls, it simply is not a convenient option. And the bus still does not alleviate the need for a car – how are suburban residents going to get from their homes to the bus station?

Carpooling is even less realistic. Unless you punch a time card, and find others who do so at the same hours, who live near you and work near you, this is not going to happen either.

We actually have it pretty good in Colorado as far as road tolls go. In some areas of the country, you can hardly get onto a highway without paying a toll. Everyone has a transponder glued to their windshield and is used to the idea of forking over several hundred per month in tolls. Under Democrat money grabs such as these so-called public-private partnerships, we may be headed there soon.

As fractivists gear up for a new battle to ban energy development, we decided to take a closer look at the Colorado players with financial links to the Russians.

Western Resource Advocates, which bragged in a press release last week that oil and gas task force member Matt Sura was also their consultant, has received $5.4 million in direct funding from the Sea Change Foundation.

That’s right, we’re saying it: A member of Gov. Hickenlooper’s oil and gas task force is linked to the scandal, that is Russian government and oil industry ties to millions of dollars pouring into anti-fracking environmental groups in the U.S.

According to a U.S. Senate report, it started with the Sea Change Foundation that was created in 2005, which has been flooded with mysterious funding “from a Bermuda based corporation that deliberately hides the source of their funds.” Numerous reports have since revealed the Bermuda corporation tied to Russia is called Klein Ltd.

As a practical matter, an overseas company contributing tens of millions to organizations dedicated to abolishing the use of affordable fossil fuels is highly problematic, the Senate report said about Klein Ltd.

The Peak reviewed Sea Change’s IRS filings from 2010 through 2013, which shows that $5.4 million went directly to the Boulder-based Western Resource Advocates. Where do these advocates stand on the issue of local control in order to ban fracking? Here’s what they said in a statement last week:

“While a handful of modest recommendations were adopted addressing health studies and regulatory staffing, the Task Force didn’t give residents and local governments the tools they need to manage the industrial oil and gas development that we are seeing in Colorado today. The majority of members of the Task Force saw resolving the conflict between local government and oil and gas development as the central issue. Unfortunately, the oil and gas industry blocked the most meaningful recommendations on local government’s role in protecting its citizens … Unless the industry and the state do a better job of collaborating with residents and local governments, we are going to continue to see more and more conflict over oil and gas development.”

And here’s what they had to say about Sura:

Matt Sura, consultant to Western Resource Advocates and an Oil and Gas Task Force member, believes that local governments share siting responsibility with the COGCC for oil and gas development – especially in watersheds.

“By federal and state statute, local governments have been given the responsibility to regulate development, including oil and gas development, in floodplains. Local government staff have the on-the-ground local knowledge and expertise needed to protect our water quality and public health and safety.”

Sura noted, “It is a sad irony that one day after the task force completed its recommendations intended to reduce conflicts between the state and local governments, the COGCC is engaged in rulemaking that ignores the role local governments play in permitting activities within watersheds.”

We admit, even we were shocked.

We don’t know the legal ramifications for foreign countries to influence state and local governments through shady environmental donations, but this sure as Hell stinks to high Heaven.

Russia’s bought-and-paid-for fracking wars scream for attention from our state and congressional leaders. Meanwhile, we’ll keep hammering away at the issue, which brings us to our second Colorado group.

Russia’s Sea Change’s fortune also trickled down to Conservation Colorado, that not only opposes fracking and criticized the oil and gas task force’s work, but passed more than $100,000 of its cash to campaigns against the recall elections of Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs and Sen. Angela Giron of Pueblo.

Let’s follow the money, class. Sea Change gave $3 million to the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, which kicked $268,000 down to Conservation Colorado that in turn dropped $108,250 in the recall elections including $75,000 that was funneled through Taxpayers for Responsible Democracy — the same organization that collected $350,000 from then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

And what is Conservation Colorado up to now? Take a look at this press release last week from Executive Director Pete Maysmith:

“Five months after the Governor’s Oil and Gas Task Force convened, the recommendations put forward lack the substance needed to protect Coloradans and our environment from drilling and fracking. Today’s outcome had some gravy, but forgot the meat and potatoes. This despite the fact the Task Force heard loud and clearly from Coloradans in communities across the state that are being impacted; from to Durango to Rifle to Greeley — communities are asking for something to be done.”

In the hours before hosting the bitter and divisive U.S. Senator Al Franken as the honored guest at the Jefferson-Jackson Day fundraising dinner, Colorado Democrats faced what was either a lack of real options, or simple delusion, and re-elected State Chair Rick Palacio and Vice Chairs Beverly Ryken and Barbara Jones at their bi-annual state organizational meeting. The leadership will serve two year terms, which will carry the Colorado Democratic Party through the critical 2016 elections.

Coming off catastrophic losses in 2014, in which Mark Udall become the first sitting U.S. Senator to lose re-election in Colorado since 1978, the Colorado State Senate flipped to Republican control for the first time in a decade, Andrew Romanoff lost one of the tightest and most expensive Congressional campaigns in the nation, and all three of the Colorado state constitutional offices below the Governor went to Republicans, most reasonable observers would expect some change at the top. Most reasonable participants would demand change.

Instead, it appears that Colorado Democrats doubled down on their failed leadership and flawed agenda. And, Democratic activists are not happy, as some of the comments on Facebook noted:

“And the party continues to sink.”

“Tim Gill still has control of the party. Blue is officially the new Red.”

“The Tammany Hall of the West.” (very clever)

But you won’t find us complaining. With incumbent Senator Michael Bennet stumbling out of the blocks for his 2016 re-election campaign and knowing the key role that our state will play in any presidential contender’s electoral calculus, we welcome the complacency. Carry on liberals.

This week has been a testament to Democrats’ Dirty Doings, and this might just be cherry on top. According to some liberal activists, the head of the Democratic State Party, Rick Palacio, is appointing his supporters to the central committee, which is responsible for re-electing him Chairman. And Democrats say there’s no voter fraud…all we have to do is look within their own elections to see their playbook.

Here’s what one activist (UPDATE: who happens to be running against Palacio) posted on Facebook:

“Yesterday central committee members received an email from Chairman Palacio stating that he will appoint 46 new men to the state central committee to achieve gender balance. While party rules do permit appointments for balance, never before has the rule been used in a manner that so clearly seems to benefit a single candidate. The current chair used the party attorney to seek permission from Washington D.C. to add members prior to our re-organization 39 hours before a vote on an election including the chair. Previously this administrative function of the chair had been used after the re-organization meeting — not before.

“The most logical solution is to wait until after tomorrow’s reorganization meeting at which a new chair will be selected and allow the elected central committee to vote on our party chair as we have done previously. In the event that we must name members today, to avoid any questions about the fairness of the process, last night I suggested to Chairman Palacio a solution in which each candidate for chair identify 1/3 of the new members. Rather than doing so, Chairman Palacio rejected that proposal and is instead handpicking 46 members who will vote in his own election.

An election that appears tainted will publicly damage this party for years to come. No matter who you are supporting for chair, please join in insisting Chairman Palacio pursues a solution that will ensure our party election is conducted in a fair manner.”

First, we’re laughing because Palacio’s name is even in the mix for this position after the disastrous results here in Colorado. The 2014 election was an utter failure for Palacio. Second, we’re laughing because of this odd socialist-like rule that allows the party to appoint people for gender balance (and the fact that this rule would be abused). Third, we’re laughing because, in order to achieve balance, they had to appoint 46 (!) men.

Of course, we can’t imagine why no men would sign up to lead a party that only talks about women’s lady parts. (That’s sarcasm folks.) It’s the same reason that now-former Sen. Mark Udall lost his election – not only do men not want to talk incessantly about a uterus, but most successful women don’t want to talk about this either.

We’ve popped the popcorn. Can’t wait to see the results of tomorrow’s meeting.

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